INVESTIGATIONS/World

Underground Malta and The Missing Children II

The Malta Enigmas - Part II

CART RUTS

The islands of Malta and Gozo are the most famous of the archipelago, and hosts the largest  number of the mysterious and ancient Cart Ruts, also known as Cart Tracks. They are grooves engraved into the stone of Malta in so large a number, in such a confused and entangled manner to leave anyone with a lot more questions than answers.
How did they formed? Is it an artificial work? Who did that, and why?
The Maltese Cart Ruts end at the edge of sheer cliffs dropping into the sea, but continue their path under water, in the marine floor. They are absolutely chaotic in patterns (e.g. The ruts at Clapham Junction and San Gwann Junction) and directions.
The site of Ghar Zerriegha shows more than any other place that these grooves were made by human hand; however there no conclusive evidence to determine this assumption 100%, especially if one considers what has been found in that area. Have all those tracks been made for the same reason and at the same time?
One of the most famous sites where these lines are present is Misrah Ghar il-Kbir (Better known as Clapham Junction) near Siggiewi, by the Dingli cliffs. Clapham Junction displays a complex net of ruts carved into the very rock. The age and the scope of these lines is one of the mysteries of the Maltese past.
The common idea among the archaeologists is that the site developed about 4000 years ago by people coming from Sicily, who started the Bronze Age on the island.
The Cart Ruts are dug 60cm deep into the rock, and their distance vary between 110cm and 140cm one from the other. Some of them cross each other, or merge into each other creating junctions. Because of this peculiar feature of resembling a railway network, an Englishman named the area Clapham Junction.
Among the various theories which have been formulated over the years upon the function of the Cart Ruts, there are:

- They represent trails to guide the goods-loaded carriages so to avoid being stuck or damaged by the rocks.

- The ruts themselves were used to slide the goods from one point to another

- A possible, primitive irrigation system

- Maltese Archaeologist Anthony Bonanno believes that the Cart Ruts were made by the Phoenicians (VII sec. BC), so setting the age of the ruts after the commonly-believed 2000 BC

Recent studies seem to suggest that the ruts are the result of a continuous passage of carriages whose wheels had progressively eroded the sandstone covering the soil at Misrah Ghar il-Kbir; a simulated analysis of wheels pressure upon sandstone would match the depression in the Cart Ruts.
Prof. Mottershead of Portsmouth University said that:

“...The rocky substrata of Malta is weak, and when it wets loses at least the 80% of its hardness. The carriages would have at first created the tracks on the soil but this, once eroded, would have allowed the wooden wheels to cut directly into the rocky strata underneath, thereby facilitating the same path of other carriages...”